Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana are locked level at 4:4 after a spectacular exhibition of chess on Day 1 of the Clutch Chess International final. Both players came up with bold opening ideas and although Magnus had the majority of the chances he was left frustrated, especially at failing to convert a won position in the final game that would have given him a 4-point lead. “I think I’m a better chess player and I also think I’m playing better most of the time,” was his response when Maurice Ashley suggested he’d lost his mojo.
You can replay all the games from Clutch Chess International using the selector below:
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Jennifer Shahade, Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley:
“It was a very tense day. It started out kind of boring and then it got…” was how Fabiano Caruana began his post-game interview, but then he had to correct himself with, “Ok, the first game wasn’t boring, I was just lucky to survive that!” Magnus varied from a 2019 World Cup game between Evgeny Bareev and Caruana’s coach Rustam Kasimdzhanov with 6.f3 and followed up with 7.Kf2 – a bold conception, even if Anish Giri was on hand to point out that it was no surprise for chess engine aficionados!
It worked out well for the World Champion, since down to under 20 seconds Fabi blundered in a tricky position with 41…d3? and was lost until move 46:
With a computer on hand it’s easy to advise Magnus here to “just” play the solid 46.Rd4 and you have a +4 advantage but, for instance, the reason 46…Rc5? isn't good for Black there is the trick 47.Rd8+! Kxd8 48.Ne6+. The move Magnus played was 46.Ke5?, which in the game looks like a crude blunder of material after 46…Rc5+, but after 47.Ke6 Nxf5 48.Ne4 the only move that wasn’t losing for Fabi was what he played, 48…Ng7+!, and the black knight saves the day with some acrobatics (in fact 49.Kf6? would lose to 49…Nh5+! and 50..Nf4+ next).
There are of course more variations based on all Black’s other possible choices, and Magnus made his pick with just over 10 seconds left on his clock. When Maurice Ashley later suggested Magnus was lacking flow and getting into more time trouble than usual he responded:
The positions were very difficult to play, I would say, and if you follow the games from the chess24 events, the invitational tournaments, then I’ve been in time pressure quite a bit, so it’s nothing new at all to me.
The theme of time would be crucial as the day wore on, but first there was one genuinely quiet game, Game 2, before Game 3 was a beautiful win for Magnus which deserves to be printed in a chess book with multiple diagrams and exclamation marks. The World Champion seemed to have got nothing from a London System opening until 19…b5?! allowed a remarkable journey for the white knight, that had just come from b3:
20.Ne4! exploited the undefended knight on c6 and the black queen’s position on the d-file, though arguably 20…dxe4 21.Bxe4 Nd4! would have been no worse than what happened in the game. Fabi spent over 2 minutes on 20…Qd7 and then after 21.Ng5 Rad8 22.Bc2 b4!? 23.Ba4 bxc3 24.bxc3 Qc8? it was time for the next hammer blow, 25.f5!
The real point, however, was that after 25…gxf5 White had 26.c4!
Once again the weakness of that c6-knight was exposed, and the game was effectively over. After 26…Nd4 27.Rxd4 Bxd4 28.Bxe8 Rxe8 29.Qxh5! there was no defending the black position and White went on to take the lead.
In the next game Magnus played the Sicilian and was met by an idea absolutely in the spirit of the times, with Fabiano jamming his pawn up to h5 by move 8. Magnus responded boldly but not entirely accurately – we’ll come back to this for the clutch games – but still got a very decent position until stumbling into a worse endgame and then missing a trick. 42…Kd6 was a mistake:
43.Nxh5! Rxh5 44.Rxg4 won another pawn, and the conversion proved to be surprisingly simple.
Magnus had perhaps paid the price there for his time management, but it was Fabi who would suffer a similar fate in the doubly important first clutch game that followed. Once again there was fire on board, with Fabiano spending two minutes in the following position:
21…f6 looks obvious and may well be the best move, but Fabi came up with the dramatic 21…Nxd4!?, allowing 22.Rxg7+. Magnus played that only after 3 minutes, and it seems that after 22…Kh8 23.cxd4 Qf5! White did have enough weaknesses of his own to offset the weakening of the black king.
We soon got a queen ending that should have been a relatively simple draw, but as Fabiano would later comment:
I felt like I was slightly worse throughout the game, but it should always be a draw, this queen ending, but once you get low on time it does get kind of difficult, because White always has a safety net and Black always has to be careful each move.
It was a typical tale of death by a dozen inaccuracies, with e.g. 39…d5!? unnecessarily limiting the mobility of the black queen. 42…Qd2! would still have forced an immediate draw, while it was only after 44.a5 that Fabiano really made his task incredibly difficult:
He should simply have ignored the a5-pawn, for instance with 44…Qf4 or 44…Qf6, hitting d4, but instead he played 44…bxa5? and after 45.Qa6+! real precision was required from Black, if survival was still possible. Magnus went on to win in 57 moves.
The final clutch game saw a repeat of the Sicilian in Game 4, but this time Magnus had either checked his notes or done some repairs, since he met 8.h5 immediately with 8…Ng8! instead of delaying a tempo with 8…d6 first:
It made all the difference, with Fabi’s later 12.h6!? probably one AlphaZero homage too far, and 17…d5! 18.exd5 being met with a stylish and powerful move:
18…0-0-0! The players agreed on the outcome of the opening, with Fabi calling it “just a disaster”. Magnus Carlsen, bristling at the suggestion that there was something he needed to fix before the final day, commented:
I think I’m a better chess player and I also think I’m playing better most of the time. I felt like in the last game he didn’t really understand the essence of the position at all and I got a winning position without any effort whatsoever - but I’ve got to convert.
After 19.Rc1 Nxd5 20.Qf3 Ba3 Fabi was pleased with his next move:
21.Ne4!, giving up the exchange:
I was at least happy that I found Ne4. I thought at least this makes it not so easy for Black - at least here the onus is on him to find the accurate way to win.
The next critical moment was after 21…Bxc1 22.Rxc1 Nb4 23.Nc5 Bxd3 24.f6!?
That move, suddenly introducing ideas with Qf5+ or Qh3+ into the position, was highlighted by both players. Fabiano:
f6 was maybe good practically because it gives him so many options, but he got low on time here and that’s why it became difficult for him.
Magnus used the move, which he faced with 1 minute on his clock compared to Fabi’s 4, as an illustration of how difficult it is to manage your time in complicated games:
Obviously it becomes a problem when you’ve encountered something that you haven’t foreseen and then you have no time to figure it out, and that’s obviously what happened in the last game. I thought I did everything right, that I was just completely winning, and then he goes f6, a move that I hadn’t seen at all, and all of a sudden I have no time to figure out what to do in a position that’s absolutely irrational and very, very difficult to figure out…
Obviously he’s a strong player, he fights incredibly well. Obviously I would love to play faster, but if I were to play faster I would have to play a lot less complicated chess, but I think that would also be less fun for the spectators, so I think I’m in decent shape, it’s just incredibly frustrating to blow that last game.
The computer suggests 24…Kb8 first (to remove 25.Qf5+ check as an option) and then to meet most replies with 25…e4 next, but Magnus got down to under 30 seconds before playing 24…Bb5?. Suddenly the computer says White is better after 25.a4!, though after 25…Ba6 Fabi should have played 26.Qh3+ instead of 26…Ng4 – as you can see, it was a minefield for both players! 26…Kb8? was the losing mistake (26…Bb7! or 26…Rd5 and Black is apparently better), allowing 27.Nxa6+! Nxa6 28.Nxe5!
That suddenly clarified matters and left the c6-pawn indefensible, since 28…Qxe5 runs into 29.Bf4, winning the queen. Magnus put up a real fight in what followed, but Fabiano held on to score a victory that meant he ended the day not trailing 6:2 but level on 4:4.
The world no. 2 summed up:
Overall, considering that I was never really in the lead today and I was sort of playing catch-up it’s very good to be on an equal footing with him now. To lose a clutch game and then to win a clutch game in return… Especially if I’d lost this the match situation is hopeless, not only from a 4-point deficit but also the tiebreaks are just… I basically have to win my last two games for sure. So not to lose this game and especially to win it is really huge for me.
It was a tough end to the day for Magnus – “All in all it was just really, really frustrating, but that’s the way it is sometimes” – but he of course knows that a similar performance will give him excellent chances on the final day. What’s sure now is that nothing can be decided before Games 11 and 12, when 6 points will still be up for grabs!
The final starts starts on Saturday, with all the action live here on chess24 from 20:00 CEST.
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